aol is one of 2 things in langley,va…....hello?

Can sommebody PLEASE explain why people still use AOL? It stopped having any real value about oh, say 1995 as far as I can tell. Since then it’s been an answer looking for a problem, not to mention a pain in the neck to deal with.

Back in 1999, I tried to quite AOL and ended up damn near working full time for two months to defend myself from their wrath. Like all ISP sites, AOL maintains there is a Firewall that protects your private information from their employees. Don’t believe it.

I started out rational enough, by simply requesting they discontinue my service. Two weeks later, with them still refusing to do so, I got nasty and so did they. Then my computer started acting strangely. I was a computer illiterate then and knew nothing about viruses and such. They suggested I go to their anti-virus site to solve my problems. I did so, but my computer problems increased. By then, I was screaming at them, and I’m convinced their employees harassed me in retaliation.

Finally, after two months of screaming fits, they disconnected me, but charged me for another month’s service after I was disconnected.

My advice, don’t go there in the first place. It’s a lawless organization.

*laughing* Why cancel? AOL is some of the best free internet out there. Seriously, even though I wouldn’t touch it with a 10 ft pole and blame someone else - If you need internet access at home, just call AOL and tell them you think you might try MSN or something, and they will keep piling on the months of free service to PLEASE reconsider… I have several friends who do this, on my recomendation every three months or so… LOL

Did you know that if you and your mate, together, have one AOL account and your mate dies you have to send the death certificate to AOL before they’ll cancel your account? And when you fax it and they receive it, they’ll claim they didn’t receive it and on and on and on.  Took my friend 3 months to cancel - nevermind that she’d just lost the love of her life.

I tried to cancel my AOL account once and was offered a free month to reconsider.  Fool that I am, I accepted.  I was not told that after 30 days my account would be reactivated.  AOL took money from my checking account through electronic transfer which caused me to be overdrawn.  Being a song/jingle writer I wrote sarcastic 15 second songs for both AOL and my local bank and sang them for supervisors of both entities.  I told them the next people I would perform them for would be local TV newspeople.  Both supervisors agreed with my opinion that the two soundbites were probably good enough to make the national news.  AOL returned my money to account and the bank dropped it’s demand for a service charge.  Sometimes you can fight city hall.

The guy at AOL was just doing what the company wanted and what they trained him to do. So in typical American corporate fashion the little guy takes the rap for what the honchos dream up.

AOL should have given him a bonus. *Then* changed their customer retention practices. I had an account with them back in the early days of the commercial web and had a difficut time canceling as well.